My obituary for Andrew Breitbart has occasioned a lot of comment. I don't think I will respond to very much of it. Readers can decide for themselves. But I'll make an exception for a line in Mickey Kaus' blog today. Mickey writes in defense of Andrew Breitbart's handling of the Shirley Sherrod video:
I guarantee you Breitbart posted it because he felt it truthfully made a legit point (and he wasn’t aware what the rest of it would show).Read more.
In other words: somebody handed Andrew Breitbart a piece of video that purported to depict a government official as a confessed anti-white racist. Breitbart so strongly felt that the video made a "legitimate point" that he posted and publicized it without checking whether it was true. The official was forced to resign. But it quickly emerged that the video had been doctored and distorted. The video Breitbart posted was a lie. And although Breitbart was not himself the author of the lie, his vision of politics as war had made him recklessly indifferent to was true and what was false.
Which is of course exactly what I said in my obituary.
The question for Mickey is this: When Al Sharpton dies, won't his friends offer almost exactly the same defense of his behavior in the Tawana Brawley hoax?
